《新闻周刊》神秘买家解密

    “我们收购了《新闻周刊》（Newsweek）！”

    IBT传媒集团首席执行官艾蒂安•尤扎克上周末在Twitter上发布了上面这条微博。他无疑被本周一下午宣布收购《华盛顿邮报》（ Washington Post）的杰夫•贝佐斯抢了风头。不过，不管怎么说，《新闻周刊》是美国的大牌杂志，但却被一家大家可能从来没有听说过的公司收购了。然而，尽管他新收购的《新闻周刊》名头很响，尤扎克的这条微博却并没有引起多大反响，只有IBT旗舰网站IBTimes.com的执行编辑忠诚地转发了一次。

    尤扎克和他的联合创始人乔纳森•戴维斯渴望引领数字媒体革命。他们以IBTimes.com为网址的旗舰网站《国际商业时报》（International Business Times）在媒体评测与网络分析公司Quantcast监测的1百万个URL网址中流量排名前0.02％。这个旗舰网站声称在美国拥有700万受众，而在全球范围内拥有1,300万受众。但是，我周一上午把尤扎克添加到我的Twitter关注名单中时，我发现自己只是他的第51位粉丝

    他俩居然希望挽救美国新闻行业有史以来最有名的机构之一，在华盛顿邮报公司（这家公司曾经拥有《新闻周刊》多年）、蒂娜•布朗、巴里•迪勒相继失败之后获得成功。这两个家伙究竟是何方神圣呢？

    尤扎克在8月7日刚过30岁生日，那天适逢他登上维基百科一周年。他在法国和南非长大，持法国护照，曾在伦敦经济学院（London School of Economics）学习地理学和经济学，他在那里开始着迷于新的全球主义论。尤扎克在接受《财富》杂志（Fortune）采访时说：“我们花了大量的时间去讨论美国和欧洲仍在持续增长，但是它们的增长速度远不如金砖四国。我看到了一个机会，那就是为非西方国家提供大量信息。”

    他的合伙人、目前担任IBT首席内容官的乔纳森•戴维斯是美国人，现在31岁。戴维斯曾在美国加州大学洛杉矶分校（UCLA）攻读计算机工程专业学士学位，之后在硅谷工作了多年。（戴维斯更受欢迎些，他在Twitter上拥有77名粉丝，但他在一年前退出了Twitter。），他俩在2006年利用个人储蓄以及美国小型企业管理局（SBA）提供的银行贷款联合创办了一家后来发展成为IBT传媒集团的公司，没有接受来自风投机构的投入，包括融资或者咨询服务。他们表示，公司自2010年以来一直盈利。IBT传媒集团总部设在纽约，在印度班加罗尔、中国上海和澳大利亚悉尼设有办事处。编辑员工总人数约150人。

    一些媒体报道尤扎克和戴维斯与旧金山伟仁大学（Olivet University）创始人张在亨有私交，而且在经济上有所关联。张在亨是一位有争议的人物。据福音派基督徒杂志《今日基督教》（Christianity Today）报道，他或许认为，也或许并不认为，自己是基督耶稣的第二次降临，但他的许多追随者显然都坚信他是。

    尤扎克和戴维斯竭尽全力撇清他们与张在亨的关系。他们否认除了他们自己以外有其他任何人在IBT传媒集团持有股份。他俩都通过在爱德曼国际公关公司的发言人承认与伟仁大学（Olivet University）存在一些联系，但这种联系一向是“非正式的，而且不涉及酬劳。IBT传媒集团的评论都是100％独立的，而且坚持行事的最高质量。”

    尤扎克最近接受旗下IBTimes.com的一次采访中表示，他“希望该网站能够呼应在纽约和伦敦已经确立地位的商业传媒，同时成为一个全球化企业,。”这将意味着这个集团设定的业务范围相当广泛，同时侧重于可以产生流量的那些令人兴奋的新闻。它既有原创报道，比如周二早上有关CVS公司“表现出众的第二季度财报”的重要报道；此外还有像《赫芬顿邮报》（HuffPost）那样从其他新闻机构那里转载的内容，包括一些商业角度不明显的新闻报道。比如，路透社（Reuters）在2011年7月12日提供了一篇新闻报道：《加州女子割断丈夫阴茎，说他活该》。戴维斯非常喜欢这篇报道，还在Twitter上转发了这篇报道。

    "We acquired Newsweek!!!"

    So tweeted Etienne Uzac, CEO of IBT Media, over the weekend. He was certainly upstaged Monday afternoon when Jeff Bezos announced he was buying the Washington Post. Still, Newsweek is a big name, especially to be acquired by a company you've probably never heard of. And yet despite his new media property's high profile, Uzac's tweet was a dud, retweeted exactly once, loyally, by the managing editor of IBT's flagship website, IBTimes.com.

    Uzac and his co-founder, Johnathan Davis, aspire to leadership of the digital media revolution. Their flagship website -- International Business Times, at IBTimes.com -- is among the top 0.02% of the 1,000,000 URLs monitored by Quantcast; it claims an online audience of over 7 million in the U.S. and 13 million worldwide. But when I added Uzac to my Twitter list Monday morning, I became only his 51st follower.

    Who are these guys who hope to salvage one of the most storied institutions in American journalism, and so succeed where the Post (which owned Newsweek for years), Tina Brown, and Barry Diller failed?

    Uzac, the CEO, turns 30 on August 7, on the one-year anniversary of his Wikipedia listing. He grew up in France and South Africa, carries a French passport, and studied geography and economics at the London School of Economics, where he became entranced with the new globalism. "We talked a lot about how the U.S. and Europe were still rising but not as fast as the BRICS," Uzac tells Fortune. "I saw an opportunity to serve these non-Western countries with great information."

    His partner and IBT's chief content officer is Johnathan Davis, a 31-year-old American who studied computer engineering as an undergraduate at UCLA and did time in Silicon Valley. (Davis is more popular: He has 77 followers, but he quit tweeting a year ago.) Together they launched what became IBT Media in 2006, with personal savings, a SBA bank loan, and no input, financial or advisory, from VCs. They say they've been profitable since 2010. Headquarters are in New York, with offices in Bangalore, Shanghai, and Sidney. Total editorial employees: about 150.

    Some reports have tied Uzac and Davis, personally and financially, to David Jang, founder of San Francisco-based Olivet University. Jang is a controversial figure. He may or may not believe that he's the second coming of Christ, according to an investigation by the evangelical magazineChristianity Today, but apparently many of his followers are convinced that he is.

    Uzac and Davis take pains to distance themselves from Jang. They deny that anyone other than themselves has ever held equity in IBT Media. Both acknowledge through their spokesperson at Edelman that they have ties to Olivet University but that they've always been "informal and unpaid ... IBT Media's editorial is 100% independent and adheres to the highest quality of conduct."

    In a recent interview with his own IBTimes.com, Uzac said he "hopes the site will become a global answer to the 'established business media' in New York and London." That would be business broadly defined, with an eye for sparkly headlines that generate traffic. There is original reporting, like Tuesday morning's lead story on CVS's "seriously good second quarter." And a lot of HuffPost-style pick-ups from other news organizations, including some where the business angle is not obvious. This July 12, 2011 dispatch, for instance, courtesy of Reuters: "California Woman Cuts off Husband's Penis, Says He Deserved it." Davis liked that story so much he tweeted it.